Creating and viewing plate records in Notebook

The plate map tool can be used in Notebook to edit fixed plates and save records of those edits in Notebook entries. Each record provides an interactive illustration of the plate, its annotations, and its contents that scientists can reference in the lab and any user reviewing the Notebook entry can easily visualize.

Creating plate records in a Notebook entry

1. Open a Notebook entry
2. Select "Insert" > "Plate map”
3. In the modal that launches, choose whether you want to either:
1. Create a new fixed plate entity
2. Update and add contents to an existing one
4. Proceed through the flow to:
1. Annotate well roles and schema field values
2. Fill wells with entities

Viewing a plate record in a Notebook entry

When you save and fill a plate in Notebook, Benchling saves a "plate record" to your Notebook entry. This is a locked, visual record of all of the changes you made to the plate at that point in time, including details about the transfer (for example, the source containers from which contents were transferred) that are not passed to the plate entity itself.

Like in the plate map tool, you can use the side panel on the left to switch between the well role, contents, and schema field layers to examine the details of each well.
You can also use the Download as CSV button to export the plate record as a CSV. Note that this will export the locked data from that particular plate record, which is not reflective of any future changes made to the plate entity.

Clicking “view details” will launch a modal that shows the complete record in a table for selected wells.